'If I don't do everything right, they die': Inside a one-woman hummingbird rescue operation
Meet Terry Masear, the woman behind Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue
"When [hummingbirds] come in, they're damaged, they're injured. If I don't do everything right, they die," says Terry Masear in the documentary Hummingbirds of Hollywood.
Directed by Sally Aitken, the film follows Masear as she rehabilitates hummingbirds in her home. According to the documentary, she has received over 20,000 calls since 2008 from people who have found wounded hummingbirds.
Masear, author of Fastest Things on Wings, has been running Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue since 2005.
She focuses on hummingbirds in the spring and summer, as the tiny fliers migrate through the area. During the fall and winter months, Masear turns her attention to finding homes for cats and dogs.
"From my earliest memories, I could relate to dogs and birds and animals much more than I could to humans," she says.
Hummingbirds of Hollywood follows Masear through one hummingbird rehab season. As she cares for the tiny creatures, she demonstrates how her innovative techniques can give the birds a new lease on life.
Physiotherapy for hummingbirds
"Cactus" is one of Masear's patients in the film. She says the hummingbird suffered multiple injuries after flying into something, falling onto a cactus and getting spines stuck in her back.
Masear reveals that she silently rates every bird's probability of success when they arrive. "It's a rehabbers secret, because nobody wants to hear the truth when it's bad news."
Given Cactus's injuries, Masear believes the bird had a 10 to 20 per cent chance of making it.
But neither Masear nor Cactus are quite ready to give up. They do several physiotherapy exercises, including flight training with what Masear calls the "magic wand" to help strengthen Cactus's wings.
"Every bird I've ever given flight training or physical therapy to inside a cage was done with this magic wand," she explains, as she demonstrates moving it up and down with Cactus sitting upon it, encouraging the little bird to flit her way onto a nearby perch. "It's like a wizard's wand. It works."
Then there's Mikhail and Alexa, two hummingbirds in Masear's care who seem to be developing a bond.
The two birds share a cage (Masear calls it a "high-end condo") in the aviary.
Alexa was brought in after being hit by a car. Before she arrived, Mikhail was "sulky," says Masear. But despite being two different species of hummingbird, it appears that Mikhail is quite smitten with Alexa.
"That's a love story we need to explore further," she says in the film.
Unfortunately, not every bird is able to recover. Such in the case of Sugar Baby, a bird who was in bad shape when she arrived. Masear says she stayed up half the night with Sugar Baby as the little bird died.
"It's not like it was the first time it happened to me, but it doesn't ever get easy either. It was very traumatic," she says.
As the summer comes to an end, Masear has done all she can to rehabilitate the birds and rebuild their independence. She considers her work complete when she can confidently release the hummingbirds back into the wild.
"As hard as it is and as exhausting as it is, you get a lot back from these birds," Masear says.
Hummingbirds of Hollywood is now streaming on CBC Gem and on the CBC Docs YouTube channel.
